Socialism Doesn’t Work Any Better Next Time Around

There’s a story of an old cowboy, sitting in a diner and staring down intently at a bowl of chili. A young cowboy comes in and sits next to the old-timer. For the next 15 minutes the greenhorn impatiently watches the old cowboy looking down at the bowl of chili, until finally he can’t stand it any longer.

“If you’re not going to eat that chili, would you mind if I help myself?” The young cowboy asks.

“Suit yourself,” the old hand says.

The young man slides the bowl to himself, and gorges on the chili like he hasn’t eaten for a week. As he is finishing the chili, he notices that there’s a dead mouse in the bottom of the bowl. The sight is so disgusting that he throws up into the bowl.

As the greenhorn weakly stares down into the bowl of chili, the old man speaks up. “Yep. “That’s exactly what I did.”

Well, the moral of the story is, “Don’t gulp down the socialism. It’s made every nation who ate it sick, and you’ll be real sorry if you eat it too.”

So unlike the old cowboy in the story, they’re actually trying to warn us not to eat the socialism. And fat lot of good it’s doing them.

The People’s Republic of China holds $682 billion worth of US debt, and they are now very concerned about the “reckless policies of our spending.” They see a socialist-spending-addicted America not only destroying the US currency, but other currencies around the world as well.

“We want some kind of a guarantee that your money is going to be worth something if you keep spending so much over there and devalue not only your currency but the currencies throughout the world… We hate you guys. Once you start issuing $1 trillion, $2 trillion, or more dollars, we know the dollar is going to depreciate.”

And now we are getting a similar warning from a former KGB agent. Russian Prime Minister Vladamir Putin gave America a sobering warning:

Russian Prime Minister Vladamir Putin has said the US should take a lesson from the pages of Russian history and not exercise “excessive intervention in economic activity and blind faith in the state’s omnipotence”.

“In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made the state’s role absolute,” Putin said during a speech at the opening ceremony of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “In the long run, this made the Soviet economy totally uncompetitive. This lesson cost us dearly. I am sure nobody wants to see it repeated.”

Sounding more like Barry Goldwater than the former head of the KGB, Putin said, “Nor should we turn a blind eye to the fact that the spirit of free enterprise, including the principle of personal responsibility of businesspeople, investors, and shareholders for their decisions, is being eroded in the last few months. There is no reason to believe that we can achieve better results by shifting responsibility onto the state.”

Putin also cautioned the US against using military Keynesianism to lift its economy out of recession, saying, “in the longer run, militarization won’t solve the problem but will rather quell it temporarily. What it will do is squeeze huge financial and other resources from the economy instead of finding better and wiser uses for them.” Putin’s comments come in sharp contrast to Russia’s own military buildup and expansion.

Putin also echoed the words of conservative maverick Ron Paul when he said, “we must assess the real situation and write off all hopeless debts and ‘bad’ assets. True, this will be an extremely painful and unpleasant process. Far from everyone can accept such measures, fearing for their capitalization, bonuses, or reputation. However, we would ‘conserve’ and prolong the crisis, unless we clean up our balance sheets.”

“The time for enlightenment has come. We must calmly, and without gloating, assess the root causes of this situation and try to peek into the future.”

What on earth do you even say when you discover that not only has the United States become socialist, but that in fact it has become SO socialist that a even communist and formerly communist countries are actually shocked at our massive socialist spending?”

“Turbo Tax Tim” Geithner said he would “commit $1.5 trillion in public and private funds, just for starters — with the possibility of more than $2 trillion — to aid banks, unfreeze consumer credit markets and stem the soaring foreclosure rate.” The Wall Street Journal headline says it all: “New Bank Bailout Could Cost $2 Trillion.”

Despite the enormous size of the $787 billion stimulus plan, some economists worry that it won’t make a big enough dent in unemployment and that lawmakers will have to work on another stimulus in short order — something members of Congress are loathe to discuss.

“That’s possible,” said Alice Rivlin, a former Clinton administration budget director. “I think the economy is getting worse quite rapidly and this may not prove to be enough.”

And why is that, Ms. Rivlin? Why might it not be “enough”?

The stimulus got “less stimulative,” Rivlin said, as it passed through the Senate and some of the things that offered “the biggest bang for the buck” were scaled back, such as more money for food stamps.

*Gasp*

You mean it was exactly what those mean old Republicans said it was – more relief than stimulus. More social spending than jobs? That, in fact, any stimulative part of the bill was watered down or eliminated in favor of special interest spending on programs which are either years in the future or will provide no immediate jobs with which to help get the economy moving?

You mean, despite all the rhetoric and nonsense to the contrary by Obama and the Dems, we are on the road to repeating the mistakes Japan made that brought them their “lost decade”?

No kidding?

And I doubt many would call Ms. Rivlin a right-wing reactionary economist spouting Republican talking points, would they?

So now that the Dems have fulfilled their 40 year social program spending spree, it appears they may now try to actually stimulate the economy with a few more hundred billions of your great, great, great grandchildren’s money.

“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. Things that we had postponed for too long, that were long-term, are now immediate and must be dealt with. This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before.”

He meant using the economic crisis the way Hitler used the Reichstag fire – to ruthlessly ram home a socialist agenda, sweeping aside all obstacles in the way in the name of “resolving the crisis.”

I feel like someone must have felt had they watched as Germany plunged into NAZI socialism (‘NAZI’ being the acronym for ‘National Socialist German Workers’ Party’) before cheering crowds, while I alone knew what was going to happen. These blind, unreasoning fools are going to lead us into total disaster.

And now – after trillions of dollars’ worth of socialism and counting fast – we find ourselves in the Bizarro world where Chinese Communists and former KGB agents warn us that we are eating something that is going to make us very sick.